Evaluations of Public Policies and Governance

Abstract

Evaluations of Public Policies in Japan are now moving from trial to implementation stages. The central and local governments endeavour to integrate evaluations with public sector management reform through building evaluation activities into the management cycle of policies. However, new public management (NPM) requires a reconsideration of the interrelationships between government and people in the democracy; the nature of problem solving is based on governance in addition to a market mechanism. In a governance relationship. evaluation and auditing also are needed to refine the approach, because public accountability itself is complex and interactive by contrast to hierarchical and straight line chains in a government framework.

In this regard, this paper will make clear the functions of evaluation in the context of NPM. Besides, it will be discussed how government auditing, a kind of evaluation in terms of financial management has been developed and responded to NPM and performance measurement in performance management through comparing to Supreme Audit Institutions in developed countries. Then the relations among evaluation, government auditing and governance will be investigated and finally some policy implementations are shown.